Friends in high places

Freda Black used to be an Assistant DA in Durham County. She ran against Mike Nifong in the 06 primary and lost. She's running again for the unexpired portion of his term this year.

Here's a screen grab from the "contribute" page of her website:

In case you can't read the text, here it is:

Yes! I want to help Thomas work for Durham! Raising the necessary funds to be competitive is a vital part of any campaign. Your contribution now will mean a great deal to our success. I am looking forward to being a mayor you can be proud of!

Anybody know anyone named Thomas running for mayor?

h/t to reader k

Continue reading Friends in high places

Place your bets

Now that Bill Bell has sent Thomas Stith into early retirement from public life, how long will it be before Stith is re-employed by one of Art Pope's think tanks?

Place your bets in the comments. Whoever comes closest wins a $20 gift certificate to the Regulator Book Shop, a fine locally owned establishment.

UPDATE: I should have noted that entries into this contest will be accepted until midnight, Friday, November 9. Also, since blogger does not capture email addresses when you post, you should also email me at DependableErection AT gmail DOT com and let me know how to reach you in case you win. In the event the winning entry does not provide me with contact information, the prize will be awarded to whoever is the next closest entrant that i can get in touch with.

Oh, and by the way, a really heartfelt thanks to everyone who stopped by over the past few days, especially to all of you who commented on various threads. Traffic on the site over the last two days was almost 4 times greater than any previous two day period, and i'm both astonished and humbled that so many of you take the time to read my rantings.

Thank you all.

Continue reading Place your bets

That's one way to look at it

Matt's got an interesting post over at the Bull's Eye blog about some fliers handed out by the Durham Democratic party this weekend. (Full disclosure - I handed these out in my neighborhood, along with a David Harris info piece this weekend.)

Matt notes that "Stith has strong ties to the Republican Party but has not emphasized his political affiliation, for obvious reasons. He thinks his Republican status should be irrelevant in a non-partisan race."

There's two ways to read that, i think. One is that there are reasons why Stith has remained silent about his party affiliation, and discerning readers know what they are. The other is that "the obvious reason" why Stith has not played up his Republican credentials is that he thinks it "should be irrelevant in a non-partisan race." I think the latter is what Matt is saying.

But i think the former is the case. Stith's initial foray in the race played on one of the favorite hot-button issues of Republicans nationwide - illegal immigrants. That didn't pan out so well for the candidate, and he quickly switched gears to a series of personal attacks against incumbent mayor Bill Bell. But Stith's conservative agenda, his Republican credentials (he sought the Republican nomination for Lt. Governor in 2004), his ties to Art Pope's reactionary Civitas Institute are all issues in the campaign, whether Mr. Stith wants them to be or not. His tactics in this campaign, borrowed heavily from Republican strategists, are issues in the campaign. It's a bit disingenuous of him to try to claim the high road at this point in time.

Continue reading That's one way to look at it

The strange case of the disappearing campaign signs

So, sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning a couple of hundred signs appeared around Durham proclaiming "STITH: Right Wing REPUBLICAN Don't Be Fooled!"


Corner of Avondale and Trinity, Durham, NC


The signs were not attributed, but there's no reason to think that Kevin's supposition in the commentsthat local Democrats had something to do with it is incorrect. Surprisingly, North Carolina law does not require that campaign signs indicate who paid for them. You probably can't tell in the jpeg above, but neither of the two signs in the photo contains a "Paid for by . . . " disclosure statement. It would make sense that the Stith campaign, which has made little mention of Stith's conservative bona fides as a Civitas Institute VP, would not be happy to see this information becoming a campaign issue at a late date in the campaign.

But does that explain the disappearance of a large number of these signs between Saturday night and Sunday morning? Does the Stith campaign really want to keep his conservative, right-wing, Republican credentials a secret from Durham voters?

This is, after all, the same candidate who appeared in the following video, promoting a Civitas Institute conference by using the word "conservative" or the phrase "conservative movement" 11 times in just over a minute.



Who's trying to fool who?

Continue reading The strange case of the disappearing campaign signs

More thoughts on the mayor's contest

Election Day is just over a week away. This year's race between incumbent Bill Bell and City Councilman Thomas Stith verifies at least one point i've been making in private conversation for a while now: Durham isn't a small town anymore.

Read the latest campaign finance reports, filed this week, to see what i mean. It's clear that the developers and real estate lobby, not to mention folks from Art Pope's empire, many of whom hail from Raleigh and Charlotte, have a favorite candidate. And they're dropping contibutions between $1,000 and $4,000 Thomas Stith's way.

Bill Bell is listing a handful of contributions, totalling a little over $2,000, from employees of the Marcum and Kliegman accounting firm, which is based in new York, and about $3,000 from a couple of other New York residents affiliated with the Sprung Monument Company. No idea what their connection with Bill Bell might be, but it's unlikely they'll be angling for any favors from the Durham mayor's office.

There's no doubt that the mayor's race is the most partisan seen in Durham since Bell first defeated Nick Tennyson 6 years ago, and probably for quite some time before that. Stith plays down his Republican and Art Pope ties on the campaign trail, but it's important to recognize that his campaign is in many ways a petri dish for testing out 2008 themes in other Democratic strongholds in North Carolina. If he does win, expect to see a lot more mud in next year's campaigns. Not to mention another attempt at a statewide run.

UPDATE: Two things i should have noted in the post. First, i'm a contributor to the Bill Bell campaign. After this weekend, i'm in for a total of $140. I don't show up in any of the campaign filings as of yet, though.

Second, Kevin's running a contest. Whoever comes closest to picking the results of the mayor's ection race next Tuesday gets a $25 certificate to a "local restaurant." Don't know if that means you pick the restaurant or he's already got the gift card, but why not give it a shot?

Continue reading More thoughts on the mayor's contest

A message missing from Thomas Stith's campaign

I wonder why Thomas Stith doesn't talk much about the Reagan legacy on the Durham campaign trail?

UPDATE: Here's why i posted this. In a single 75 second clip, Thomas Stith uses the word "conservative" to describe the organization he represents, and by extension, the movement to which he belongs, seven times. About once every 10 seconds.

Can you find the word "conservative" anywhere on Thomas Stith's campaign website or in his literature? Neither can I.

Why is he hiding his participation in the conservative movement from the voters of Durham?

Continue reading A message missing from Thomas Stith's campaign

BiF on Stith's response

Michael's got some righteous indignation up at his place.

Here's the good stuff:

he issue here, of course, isn't Stith's proposed reform. Hell, barely anyone can figure out what it would actually do. The issue is his rather obviously misleading robo-calls, which while ostensibly about some immigration policy, are of course entirely related to his unmentioned mayoral candidacy. Given the almost complete lack of any meaningful information in his calls, the message here is, of course, "illegal immigrants are everywhere! Elect me and I'll run them off!"

So let's review: Stith is in the middle of a campaign in which he's trying to claim that he's a better person to be mayor, a job which under the council-manager system Durham operates under, is mostly to chair city council and to be the public figurehead of the city. He's now demonstrated his fitness for this job by springing an issue on his fellow council members unawares, and stirring up the city with an emotionally charged, misleading robo-call that he's now backing away from as fast as he can. This is how he demonstrates his leadership?

Thomas Stith is a disgrace.

Continue reading BiF on Stith's response

BCR on Stith's response

Kevin raises some worthwhile points in his analysis of the Thomas Stith email which i discussed below.

Go read it.

Here's the money quote:

Put directly: the robo-calls created an outroar precisely because they left a far different impression on callers than reconciling City policy with on-the-beat practice. They were best interpreted as, and -- I can only conclude -- intended to be, red-meat fodder to shock and awe the voting public.

Can you directly reconcile Stith's more nuanced statement yesterday about aligning policy with practice with a close textual read of the robo-call? Yes. Can you make a case that a variance of policy and practice sets up Durham for still more litigation, as Stith asserted on Monday night at Council? Yes.

But is it reasonable to believe that the robo-call was meant to inform citizens about this procedural question -- instead of using the specter of "illegal immigration" to score points among Stith's political base and moderate voters? That the typical recipient would perform a close analysis of the message text and cross-reference it back to the interaction of two policies and one in-the-field practice?

I doubt it. There's no logical reason for Stith's campaign to have chosen the robo-call tactic, in terms of the precise word choice and the (alleged) targeting of recipients, except to appeal to the basest, darkest, most emotional instincts in us. Not to say you can't and shouldn't have a rational debate over immigration policy (a subject on which I'm fairly middle-of-the-road, personally.) But rationality seemed far removed from this discussion.

Quite right.

UPDATE: i've left a comment on Kevin's blog. hopefully he'll be back from the candidate's forum soon enough to respond to it. But it's the reference to "Stith's campaign" in the last paragraph of the quote above that i want to keep focusing on. As far as i can tell, Stith's call was worded in such a way as to avoid campaign finance disclosure rules. In other words, by avoiding the phrase, "I'm Thomas Stith, and I'm running for mayor," or something similar, Stith was able to avoid having to disclose who paid for the call. That's something i'm curious about. I'd think all of durham's voters should be as well.

Continue reading BCR on Stith's response

Stith robo-call: An unexplored angle

I mentioned this briefly in the post below, but i wanted to highlight it here and hope that someone smarter than me can shed some light on this.

Listening to the recording of the call, and reading the transcript, you almost don't notice that it's not a campaign call. Nowhere does Thomas Stith say that he's running for mayor, nor does he state who is paying for the call. In fact, the call says, he's going to introduce a resolution at City Council on Monday night, and he'd like your support.

So the call is being made in his capacity as a City Council member.

Does that strike anyone else as highly unusual? If the calls were paid for by the city, would that be merely a poor use of taxpayer funds, or a violation of some kind. And would it be illegal, or merely unethical, if the calls were paid for by a third party? And if they were paid for by Stith personally, would the political exemption allowed for in the Do Not Call legislation still apply? Shouldn't it have been made clear in the phone call who was financing it?

Coupled with the use of Stith's campaign contributors today to get out his message (which, like his robo-call does not specifically appear to be part of his campaign for mayor) about the resolution he intends to submit to Council, it appears that Mr. Stith might be having some trouble separating his position on Council from his campaign for Mayor.

Is that something that needs looking into?

UPDATE: See this post for the word from Board of Elections. Bottom line - robo calls aren't covered at all by current NC election law.

My prediction. If this loophoole isn't closed, expect to get a lot of robo-calls in future campaign seasons.

Continue reading Stith robo-call: An unexplored angle

Deconstructing Stith

I posted Thomas Stith's open letter to the community attempting to justify his actions over the past few days, below.

Now it's time to take a look at Stith's letter and the circumstances surrounding its publication.

For starters, the letter appeared on the Partners Against Crime, District 2 listserv this afternoon at around 4:10 pm. It was forwarded to the list with the following information appended at the beginning:

Fwd: Please forward to your PAC listserv.


I am forwarded this, since it does refer to criminal activity.

Robert H. Appleby (Bob)
P. O. Box XXXXX
Durham, NC 27702

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Thomas Stith"
Date: September 18, 2007 12:51:18 PM EDT
To: "Bob Appleby"
Subject: Please forward to your PAC listserv

==================================

Let's start our analysis right here. First of all, Mr. Stith emailed his letter to someone with the request to forward it to your PAC listserv. And this person did, with the only addition that "it does refer to criminal activity." (For those of you unfamiliar with PACs in this incarnation, they refer to Partners Against Crime. There are 5 of them in Durham, one for each of the police districts in our city. They are generally considered to be beyond the reach of partisan or electoral politics. Mr. Appleby knows that this post probably breached that protocol, so he attempted to justify it with the claim that it referred to criminal activity.)

But might Mr. Appleby have another motivation for posting Stith's letter? Let's have a look.



Well, it turns out that Robert Appleby was an early, $500 donor to the Stith for Mayor campaign. How about that.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I have contributed $40 to Bill Bell's campaign)

So, Stith emails his campaign contributors, asking them to distribute information that can legitimately be considered campaign material to an inappropriate list. And they follow through, in an inappropriate forum without acknowledging that they're Stith campaign contributors. Lovely.

Now, follow me back a couple of days to review the phone call in question. Starting last Thursday, and continuing through Saturday, an unknown number of Durham residents reported receiving this automated phone message from Thomas Stith.

Hello, this is Thomas Stith.

Did you know that Durham is a sanctuary city, a city where illegal immigrants commit crimes without fear of being deported? That's right, our local police can't inquire about the citizenship of people who commit a crime in our city.

We can change that with your help.

In Monday's city Council meeting, I'm going to introduce a resolution that ends the policy that makes Durham a safe haven for illegal immigrants. Call members of the City Council, and attend the City Council meeting on Monday to show your support. I'm Thomas Stith. Thanks for your time.

The first thing we should notice, although i have to admit that it slipped by me, is that this is not a campaign phone call. At no point does Mr. Stith say, "my name is Thomas Stith, and I'm running for mayor of Durham." Nor does the phone call include any information about who paid for the call. Yet, i have to admit, in fourteen years of living in Durham, i've not heard of a Council member calling residents to encourage turnout at a Council meeting in support of a resolution.

Let's take a brief look at what Stith does say.
"Did you know that Durham is a sanctuary city, a city where illegal immigrants commit crimes without fear of being deported?

That's a pretty bold declaration, don't you think? Do we have any examples of this actually happening in Durham?

Here's the guidelines of enforcing the city's policy as put forth under order #4073, issued by former chief Steve Chalmers:

it is the policy of this department that officers will respect the stated objectives and enforcement guidelines of the DHS and will not make a routine effort to direct efforts at individual violations of immigration status.

If upon investigation probable cause to arrest exists unrelated to a person’s individual immigration status, officers may arrest for an offense, using discretionary guidelines set forth in General Order 1005, Limits of Accountability, Authority and Discretion. Verifying the undocumented status of any person and processing prisoners appropriately will be the responsibility of the detention facility.

In other words, according to police guidelines, Durham police offers will investigate crimes and persons suspected of committing them without taking into account the immigration status of the suspect. But once taken into custody, if the person is in the country illegally, they have no special protection against being having their status determined or being deported.

How does this jibe with the original resolution passed by Council 4 years ago? Let's have a look.

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF DURHAM:

Section 1. It is the policy of the City of Durham not to violate the constitutional or statutory rights of any person, including any such rights protecting persons from discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, national origin and immigration status.

Section 2. Unless otherwise required as part of a City officer or employee's duties, by law, or by court order, no Durham City officer or employee, during the course and scope of their employment, shall inquire into the immigration status of any person, or engage in activities designed to ascertain the immigration status of any person. This policy shall not be construed to prohibit any Durham City officer or employee from cooperating and sharing information with federal or state authorities and other governmental entities as required by law.

Section 3. In the event of conflict between federal law, regulations or any other requirement and this City resolution, the Federal law, regulations or any other requirement shall control and supersede any conflicting provision of this resolution.

Section 4. This resolution shall take effect upon adoption.

So, section 2, which tells Durham officers not to "inquire into the immigration status of any person, or engage in activities designed to ascertain the immigration status of any person," also provides three circumstances under which they can, namely if there's a court order, or a law, or if it's "part of a City officer or employee's duties."

I highlight this last clause because, to me, it's seems like a pretty blanket exception that is wide open to interpretation. And it's the responsibility of the chief to determine what the duties of his officers are.

So what's the big deal here?

Why does Thomas Stith write in his open letter:

The police currently determine status when they are investigating a criminal act. Our council policy states they should not do this.

Reading above, it appears that not only the Council resolution, but also the guidelines issued by Chief Chalmers state this should not be done. If anything, police seeking to determine immigration status during an investigation would be violating both the Council's resolution and the Chief's guidelines. So that would be an issue for the new Chief to take up, no? If both the resolution and the guidelines say the same thing, which it appears to me they do, and the police are not following those guidelines, that's an internal police matter.

Of course, there's that big out, and if the Chief should determine that it's part of the officer's duties to perform that investigation, then that could happen without violating the Council's resolution.

Stith goes on to state in his letter:

I agree that some people have characterized this
issue in a negative manner and that is unfortunate.

Well, let me be blunt. That is a steaming load of disingenuous bullshit which a candidate for citywide office should be ashamed of putting out before the public. It is not the "issue" which is being "characterized" in a "negative manner."

It was Thomas Stith who stated in a misleading phone call to many Durham residents that "In Monday's city Council meeting, I'm going to introduce a resolution that ends the policy that makes Durham a safe haven for illegal immigrants." There is nothing in either the resolution or the guidelines, even if followed to the letter, that makes Durham a "safe haven." Stith's phone call can only be characterized as a piece of fear-mongering, and it's he who has to bear the burden of bringing this negativity to the campaign, not "some people."

Stith closes by saying:

I would hope that we would not let the real issue of providing our department with the proper guidance become lost in the current misinformation that is curculating (sic).

But did his now infamous robo-call even once mention the issue of "providing our department with the proper guidance?" It did not. For Stith, the real issue in his call was "end(ing) the policy that makes Durham a safe haven for illegal immigrants."
Too bad for him that it backfired so spectacularly. And his transparently lame attempt to recast his water-carrying for Art Pope and the John Locke Foundation as a simple administrative procedure is not going to be a winner either.

Continue reading Deconstructing Stith

A campaign of fear?

Over at the Fallout Shelter, Joe reports receiving a robo-call from the Thomas Stith campaign, whose main focus seemed to be stirring up the pot against illegals.

The answer is, no, i don't believe that Durham's police department should be spending their time checking the immigration status of every Spanish speaking person whose path they cross. Speaking Spanish is not evidence that a crime has been committed. Haven't we just been through an entire year long process in which the law enforcement community got its collective ass kicked for going after people without sufficient evidence that a crime had been committed?

Or is that only a problem when those people have a certain class status?

Durham's Hispanic residents are, in fact, as diverse as is the rest of the community. There are Spanish speaking professionals and homeowners in town (some on the same block as me) as well as business owners and day laborers. There's no evidence that the Spanish speaking community has a higher crime rate than any other segment of the Durham community. Fear of Teh Illegal is just a poor way to run a citywide campaign in Durham, don't you think?

UPDATE: I hear that Bell and Stith will be Verna Collins guest Sunday on the NBC-17 public affairs show "At Issue." The show airs at 11am. I can't tell from the website whether it's a live broadcast or not (i suspect it is), but you can email her at VCollins AT wncn DOT com and ask her to ask Mr. Stith if he really thinks Durham residents will support a fear-based campaign.

Continue reading A campaign of fear?